Hello, Warriors, and welcome to another week with me, Susie Pettit, your certified life emotional intelligence and wellness coach and mind management expert. Today on the show, we’re talking about rumination. All right, great episode. This will help you so much. And if you’re the type of person who likes hearing what other listeners like you are asking and struggling with, stay till the end, because I’m trying something new on this episode and I’m going to be answering two listener questions. Super fun. Let’s go.

Hi, this is the Love Your Life Show with Susie Pettit, certified life and wellness coach. Join Susie as she helps you with your wellness and mindset so you can live a life you love. Let’s go Warriors.

Okay, lovely. You and back to us and ruminating. So fun. Actually, it is super fun. I help people with this all the time and you will feel better the less ruminating you’re doing. Okay, what is ruminating? Thinking on steroids, not just overthinking, but that looping, that going over and over, the same thought, the same worry, the same conversation in your head, the kind that doesn’t move you forward. It just keeps you stuck. You keep thinking, why aren’t they doing this or why aren’t they doing that? It’s like we’re in a rocking chair, rocking super fast, trying to get somewhere, but we never get there and it feels awful.

Ruminating is that miserable feeling when we replay what we said, we replay what we should have said, we beat ourselves up for what we said or what we missed out on saying, or we’re just like focused on the past and we’re overthinking everything, stealing from our present moment of enjoyment, or we’re overthinking everything in the future, what should be happening, what they should be doing, what maybe should happen. We’re making these plans for things that haven’t even happened yet, right? So unhelpful. Why didn’t we say this thing or what we should say if this happens again, and on and on and on.

If you’re a parent or if we’re codependent with our spouse, ruminating looks like us overthinking what our kids or spouse are doing or not doing, what lesson we need to teach, why we should have said this or that, or why if they don’t change this, this bad imagined thing will happen. We often blow up what they’re doing in the present moment to mean something dramatic about the future, all while feeling responsible for it all. Like, if we don’t let this other person know, then there’s trouble. So unhelpful to everyone, and most of us do it. This is our normal programming of our brain. Most of us who haven’t worked with a coach or have some practice of mindfulness, do it.

Let me give you a specific example, because specific examples help me learn. So think about this: say you find out that your teen is lying about something. All right, they’re there—they’re lying that they did their homework when they didn’t, or they’re vaping, or they fed the dog when they didn’t feed the dog or whatever, okay. They tell you something that they lie that they didn’t do. Okay, and our parent’s brain, we’re very quick to focus on the lying, make it mean something really big, like, my kid is a liar. Okay, and then we start overthinking that, we have this whole future laid out for our kid who’s a liar and this, and it’s just dramatic, and they’re disrespecting us, and what that means about our future relationship versus staying in the present to take what’s happening in the present. They’re lying, and not adding all this extra drama, but to see like, okay, their behavior is always telling me something—their lying is telling me something. It’s teaching me something about this current situation or their current emotional state. But our brains are so quick to jump into this over worrying and freak out mode of like, I’ve raised a liar, we spin out and catastrophize, and so we miss out on the actual present moment, the actual moment, the parenting opportunity.

Or say your spouse snaps at you. Often we overthink or ruminate what this means for our future, what it means about them, what it means about us, what it means about the relationship—maybe we’re blaming them, or we’re like, ah! Instead of using our emotional intelligence and mindfulness to stay in the present and address what happens, all of that is overthinking. And there’s a solution for all of it that moves us forward versus keeping us stuck in the ruminating, and today I’m going to help you step out of it.

Because whether you’re a new listener or a long time Love Your Life Show listener, and you’ve listened to all four hundred and eight episodes—this is four hundred and nine—please remember, we can all do with the reminder, I myself too. The truth and backbone of emotional intelligence is that our thoughts create how we feel. It is our thinking that is responsible for our feeling that leads to the way we act that creates the results in our life, not our teen’s behavior. Our teen’s behavior doesn’t make us feel a certain way, not what our partner’s snipping—that doesn’t make us feel a certain way. It’s not what’s happening in our life that make us feel a certain way. It’s the thoughts we’re thinking about those things that cause how we’re feeling, drive how we’re acting, and ultimately create the results we have in our life.

Which is why ruminating and overthinking is so harmful, especially for those relationships that we want to keep and grow versus shrink. If we keep thinking the same drama filled, worrisome thoughts over and over, things don’t end well. Like take the example that maybe our teen lies—maybe they say they turn in their homework when they didn’t. If I focus on the lying and I think, “My kid is lying to me, this is so disrespectful, I don’t tolerate lying,” like I have thoughts like that, how do I feel? I’ll tell you how I feel: I feel angry, I feel like righteous indignation. How do I parent? What do I do and what do I say as a parent? I would say something like, “Well, I checked online and you didn’t turn that in, I don’t tolerate lying, like we talked about this last week, I guess no cell phone tonight, you know, why did you lie?” Like I focus on the lying and what happens in focusing on the lying, we miss out on the real reason behind what they were doing. They’re lying, and this parenting opportunity, this skill building for them, okay.

Instead, we position ourselves as a disciplinarian, someone to get around, and honest to goodness, I see this happen so often in parent teen relationships—parent child—is that when we focus on the lying, that doesn’t teach them lying is not helpful. They learn to lie more. They aren’t like, “Oh, good point mom,” they’re like, no, because we haven’t—we’ve missed the parenting opportunity. The whole thing is missed. Instead of stopping and saying, taking a breath and doing some of the things that I’m about to teach you in this episode, we say, “Hey, I see you didn’t turn this thing in even though you said you did, what’s going on? Tell me more.” We don’t let our crazy brain grab onto the lying and race away and miss the big parenting opportunity in that moment.

And no shame in this because we were not taught this. We were taught to be more reactive in our brain without, you know, emotional intelligence. And some of the mindfulness practices I’ve been teaching in these four hundred and nine episodes move right into the drama. We move right into like how the thing happening in our life is making us feel a certain way, and today we’re calling out the BS on that because your power, your actual power comes from being able to step back and look at what your brain is doing, especially when it’s ruminating, thinking the same thought over and over.

Okay, I’m not quite sure what I’m titling this episode yet—maybe How to Stop Ruminating, but I could have called it How to Stop Injuring Yourself with Your Thoughts, How to Stop Damaging Your Parental Relationship or Your Relationship with Your Kids with Your Thoughts, How to Stop Overfunctioning in Your Spouse’s Life, How to Clean Up the Mess in Your Mind, How to Stop Spiraling About Things When You’re Supposed to be Sleeping*, because that’s what rumination is. It’s not helpful. It does not lead to skillful parenting, and it does not lead to better outcomes in the future. It’s repetition without resolution. And once clients really realize this, that we don’t have to believe every thought that comes our way, we have the power to step out of the ruminating loop and to choose something different. This is super helpful, and I’m so glad you’re here because I will help, like help you with this.

Ruminating keeps old patterns like codependency and overfunctioning continuing to play out. And that leads us to showing up in a way with our kids and our spouses where we’re overfunctioning and they can under-function, they can learn learned helplessness. It’s super important that you get this, that us thinking thoughts in our head, us worrying about things or playing out future scenarios or re-going over past conversations doesn’t help anyone. We aren’t changing anything when we think, “My daughter is struggling,” and we’re up at two a.m. trying to think of how to get her not to struggle, or, “My son isn’t motivated,” and we’re trying to think of how to motivate him, or we’re thinking, “I shouldn’t have said that,” and we’re thinking of all the other things we could have said, or, “I handled that wrong.” Okay, it is really unhelpful across the board. We don’t just feel those thoughts we feel—we don’t just think those thoughts, we end up feeling the way those thoughts make us feel, and then we act in ways that create results in our life all the time, and it’s just—we’re going to stop that.

So today, I’m going to walk you through three steps to interrupt rumination that if you practice these deliberately—and I offer, daily—you will take your brain back and notice that you’re not ruminating and overthinking and over worrying as much, which is such a gift, because then we have our brain free to do the things that actually help.

Step one in how to stop this process starts with awareness. To change anything, we have to be aware that we’re doing it while accepting that it’s not helpful. This is a choice for ruminating—we have to have enough mindfulness and education and emotional adulthood to notice that our thinking creates our feelings, and then notice what we’re thinking. When some people are beginning this, they set timers on their phone to say, “What are you thinking about?” is their alarm. And when it goes off, they stop what they’re doing and consciously ask themselves, “What am I thinking? How is that thought making me feel right now?” Most people out there in life, it’s like eighty percent of people are going through life unaware of what they’re thinking, thus how they’re feeling and gaining back some control of their life. So this is why this is the foundational, you know, beginning part of emotional intelligence to develop this—it’s mindfulness one hundred one. What are we thinking?

Hand in hand with noticing what you’re thinking is how that’s making you feel, okay: what are you thinking, how is that making you feel? And I need to say beep, beep, beep if you’re doing this, okay, we have to be doing this awareness, this sort of checking in with our brain from a non-judgmental, kind part of yourself, okay. You’re not checking in with your brain to get all judgy and like, “Oh, you’re thinking wrong again, Susie,” no, we want you to be this like, super supporter of you, just—just sort of a neutral observer. And it’s like, “Hey, I notice you’re ruminating,” or, “Oh, look at that, I’m overthinking again.” Okay, it’s so important to not beat ourselves up for it. Firstly, because that’s just frankly mean, you guys, your brain was just doing what you’ve trained it to do, so don’t get all pissy and bossy or like, “Oh, look at you doing that,” your brain’s like, “Yeah, this is what you’ve been letting me do for these last, you know, decades.”

Okay, but most importantly—so not only is it not nice, but even more importantly, if we are spending time—so say you set this alarm and then you notice that you’re ruminating, and then you’re spending time being all judgy of yourself and being like, “Oh my God, there you go again, you do this all the time”—but you are actually wasting your time getting out of it. So drop that whole charade that you beating yourself up is getting you into action faster—no. The quicker we can get to neutral awareness, a sort of like, “Oh, I was just overthinking this,” or, “Oh, wow, I was really ruminating on that conversation I had last night,” the quicker we can get to ease for our nervous system in the present moment and future growth. Beating ourselves up doesn’t help anyone or anything.

So the first step is this kind awareness, just noticing, okay, maybe what you practice this week is your alarm goes off and you say, “I notice I’m ruminating”—that one sentence can create such space and potential for growth. Right now, ruminating will feel pretty automatic—worrying, it’s a habitual thing, okay, urgent, even important. Your brain may still be believing the lie that it’s helpful for you to over obsess about that thing that happened or what they’re doing and they shouldn’t be doing, but it is not. It is like rocking super fast in a rocking chair, thinking you’re getting somewhere.

How do you really change things up? Set an alarm, go off each day and then practice saying, “I notice I’m ruminating, I notice I’m—” fill in the blank here: “I notice I’m replaying that conversation with my husband over and over,” or, “I notice I can’t stop worrying about my kid’s upcoming presentation,” or, “I notice I can’t stop thinking about that look on my kid’s face when I yelled at them.” What? Change things up by being a neutral observer instead of reactive and judging. Stopping to notice even once a day is so powerful. We go through our whole day thinking thoughts that are creating feelings that generate how we act. Stopping just once to check in with this automatic habit we have is powerful and will help you break the habit of over worrying and overthinking.

Step two: once we’re aware of our thinking, step two is about choosing a different way of thinking about the thing we’re thinking about. Change the way you think of things and the things you think of change, the magical Wayne Dyer said, giving our brain a different focus. Once you’re aware you’re ruminating and you’ve done the work with me or your coach to know ruminating doesn’t help anyone, you get to decide: is this specific way—or is this way of thinking about this specific thing helping me? Is this way of thinking about this helping me? So important.

All right, many coaches or therapists stop at the awareness, the first step, and they’re like, just be aware of it. But if we stop there, we stay stuck because the next time that same situation comes up again—like let’s say you notice that you’re ruminating and you just are like, “Oh, I notice I’m ruminating,” and you go back to doing what you were doing before, but you stop ruminating—well, the next time you get stuck in that situation comes up again and we think about it in the same way we were before, we’re going to generate that same feeling and result.

Take the example of your kid lying about their homework—it’s not enough for me to think, “I notice I’m thinking the thought she’s lying,” okay, and maybe we change our action right there and we just notice it, take some breaths, and then we get on Instagram, just saying, right? But what happens at two a.m. that morning when we wake up and again think the same thoughts about that situation? We don’t have the Instagram to distract ourselves with. We go back to our way of thinking about it, our old way of thinking about it, that is unhelpful. Unless we deliberately choose a new way to think about it, new thoughts to practice.

This is the power of what I do: cognitive mindfulness based coaching. You get to choose a more helpful thought, not a fake one, not a toxically positive one, like, “Yay, I’m glad my kid is lying,” no, you’re being yourself—slightly better, more supportive thought, okay. What I have found the most effective way to do this is based on Byron Katie’s four-thought turnaround—I’ve switched it up a bit for my—to help my specific listeners. You guys out there tend to be more people pleasers and codependent like me, my past self, okay.

And so this is the four question process I do to break out of ruminating and to learn a different way of thinking and feeling:

1. Is this thought helpful?

2. Is this thought kind?

3. How would I act without this thought?

4. What’s another thought I could think?

I will put a graphic for—I made that into like a nice little, um, Instagram-worthy—speaking of Instagram—but an Instagram-worthy post, but really, really good for your phone, so I’ll put that in the show notes at [smbwell.com/409]. And I suggest you going to that image of this person sort of holding a sign with those four questions and screenshot it to your phone for you to look at. So you get used to doing this. The more you do this, the more freedom you will feel. I’ve even had some of my super warriors take this picture and make it their phone screensaver while they’re beginning to work on this—shout out to you warriors, you know who you are.

Okay, so let’s use that four-thought, those four questions, okay, and take a parenting example. Say your teen says something and instead of calmly reacting, you know, like remaining the emotional adult you want, you yell at them, okay, and they run off in storm to their room and you think, “Oh my God, there I go again, being reactive, I’m such a bad mom, I know better than this, why didn’t I take that breath Susie talks about, oh my gosh,” and on and on and on and we’re off to the ruminating circus, right? Instead of doing that, you catch yourself and you say, “Oh, I notice I’m thinking these negative thoughts,” or, “Oh, I notice I’m ruminating,” or, “Oh, I notice I’m beating myself up,” and you use these four questions to turn it around.

Is the thought, “I am such a bad mom,” helpful? No. Is it kind? No. How would you feel or show up without that thought? Calmer, more open, able to learn. So what’s a different thought? Maybe you practice: “I’m upset I yelled,” or, “Wow, I guess I need more practice not getting reactive,” or, “Gee, it’s hard to stay calm when they’re being so snotty.” Can you see how running through those four questions in that can change how future things may go? You’re not sitting there wasting your present time thinking you should have done something different—no, I did it then—then blaming them, okay. If you had kept ruminating, you could have kept repeating those old patterns while missing an opportunity to grow.

We miss out on the main thing that experience was there to teach us here in earth school, okay, in this particular situation, it would have been showing us how we need some more skill building to stay regulated when our teen is not. How do we stay in our adult intelligence when they’re acting like the child instead of us jumping into the child mode? Emotional immaturity is blaming our teen or excusing our yelling because of something they did or said. True warriorship and emotional maturity is about knowing that nothing someone says or does can make you yell. Did you know that there is no way someone can get into your vocal cords to make your voice come out louder? Don’t give your power away. And if we’re not stuck in ruminating or judging ourselves, and the chances of us supporting ourselves in that growth are so much more likely.

All right, let me pause for a second and just let’s check in—what’s coming up for you right now? What is learning about this have you thinking about? This is a great opportunity to check in with the way you’re thinking. If you were just going about your day, folding your laundry, or going for a walk or whatever, pause and really try to ask yourself, what is thinking about this way you’re thinking teaching you? Are you stuck in the past thinking of how you blamed your kid for your yelling, or are you often ruminating on—on something else? Bring your brain back. Or maybe you’ve gone off to thinking about something else in the past or future.

It’s time to practice neutral awareness right now. “Ooh, I do notice that while Susie was talking, I got to thinking about what I needed at Trader Joe’s later.” Okay, is that a helpful way to think about it? How does thinking in that way make you feel? How might you act differently after this podcast episode if you don’t beat yourself up for that? What’s a different way you could think of your parenting or yelling that would be helpful versus keeping you stuck in that shame—shame of yourself, blame, maybe blaming of them, ruminating cycle?

Which brings me to the third step on how we stop this ruminating. Step one: we have that neutral slash kind awareness. Step two: we practice deliberate thinking, we go through the four questions, we choose a different way of thinking. And step three is we just practice, practice, practice—like right here, right now. What do you think of yourself that your mind wandered? Practice neutral awareness and then rethinking something different.

This is not a one time thing—this is mental fitness. You don’t go to the gym once and expect lifelong strength, and you don’t challenge one thought and expect your brain to stop ruminating forever. You need to practice that thought—it’s like a little baby thought, you have to nurture and grow it. You repeat it, you rewire it—this is neuroplasticity in—in action. You’ve been ruminating and overthinking things for more than a minute, my dear, so it’s going to take you more than a minute to shift out of it, okay. I had been—I probably caught myself in this pattern in my forties, so it wasn’t just one minute that I break four decades of patterns. But if you start doing this, if you intentionally listening to this podcast and you start doing it today, okay, it will not take you four decades to shift out of it, which is beautiful, okay.

Be kind to yourself and set yourself up for success by not thinking that since you’ve heard this episode, you should be a master, or maybe you heard me talk about this before, and why aren’t you doing it? No, you have a human brain—our brain loves thinking in old patterns, okay, catch yourself right here. Go into the past: “Why haven’t I learned this already?” Okay, you’re learning it again now, this is a—this is part of being human. What can I learn now? I guess I didn’t set myself up that well for that, or maybe I need to turn on the—my timer again.

I’m a life coach and I catch my thinking every single day, not because I’m broken, but because worrying, overthinking, and ruminating is a habitual way of thinking that most of us got into the habit of because of our upbringing. And the great news is habits can be changed. I rarely overthink or ruminate anymore—I used to, I used to overthink and worry every single day, multiple times a day. But now I rarely—I don’t, maybe once a month. And when I do, I catch myself quicker because I have a daily practice of thinking about what I think about, and because I meet with my coach weekly to see which patterns I’ve missed, to see which sneaky thinking has gotten in there.

My point to you is you are not broken, you can do this one hundred percent—it takes practice. If you want it to happen sooner, if you want relief faster—like if you want to spend less of your days anxious and overthinking—then get a coach for sure. They help you do things faster. It’s like if you want to get better at tennis, don’t just sit out there hitting the ball against the wall—get a coach, they’re going to help you accelerate your learning. And starting today, while you’re getting that coach—you’re getting, if you want it to be faster—everyone is going to benefit by being more intentional about catching your thoughts. The better you get at that, the faster you’ll move into a calmer state and reprogram some of this hypervigilance and hypersensitivity.

If you don’t want an actual coach, but you want more like group support and maybe a coach—it’s not like an hour every week, but fifteen minutes every week—this is exactly what I do in the Love Your Life School. I practice this work with my students in there daily. We interrupt rumination, we become calmer, more grounded parents, not because our lives change, but because we change how we’re thinking about our lives. You’ve got this warrior, so glad you’re listening.

Okay, if you want to hear two questions I’m ruminating for listeners, then stay tuned till after the outro, which is the voice of my oldest son. If not, just know that I love and support you and I’ll see you next week. Make sure you’re following the show—could you do that? Apple switched some stuff around and Spotify, you just click the plus sign or follow. All right, big love to you, you matter to me, let’s go.

Thank you for listening to the Love Your Life Show. If you want to hear more from Susie and support the show, be sure to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes. Also, leave a review and share this podcast with friends and family. Go get em, warriors.

All right, question number one listener says, “I feel on edge and hyper aware of what everyone is doing or what I think they should be doing all day. Is this ruminating and how do I stop it? I hate feeling this constant buzzing anxiety.”

Great question listener, I’m so excited, and this one fits perfectly with this episode. So since our feelings are caused by our thinking, stopping to pay attention to what we’re thinking will definitely help you feel better. My homework for you would be to set an alarm, like I spoke of in the beginning of the episode, and to get in the habit of stopping and asking, what am I thinking and how is thinking in this way making me feel okay. Often we think we don’t—or like we feel like we don’t have a choice to think about what we’re thinking about, like, and feeling how we’re feeling about the thing. Like, say your kid is struggling with her boyfriend, we sort of get this feeling like, of course I need to think about her and think about how to teach her and how to help her and how to blah, blah, blah, which leads us to feeling responsible and stressed and buzzing and anxious, as you said.

Our job is to question those thoughts. If you’re a student in the Love Your Life School, watch the training on how to stop feeling responsible for everyone and everything and—or bring your thoughts to coaching—this will help a lot. If you’re not a student yet, start the daily practice of being more aware of what you’re thinking and how thinking in that way is making you feel, and that will make a big difference.

All right, second thought listener says, “What if I don’t believe my new thought?”

All right, another great question, and this is from someone who’s obviously already been practicing and has been listening to Love Your Life Show or is a student in the school, or is one of my clients and is talking about when they’ve decided on this new thought, like the fourth part of that thought process, like, what’s a new thought I could think, okay, it doesn’t seem believable to them, okay. So maybe they don’t want to be thinking, “My kid is a liar,” and they want to be thinking, “This is a parenting opportunity,” but that’s too far of a reach. This happens all the time—most of the time, actually. Like we want to go from this—this, like, think of a riverbed, like you’re on one side of a river and you’re like on the one side and you’re in on the like, “My kid is a liar,” side, and on the other side, you can see there’s like a big sign up there, it’s like, “What is this here to teach me?” side, okay, but there’s a raging river in between you and your brain has practiced worrying and catastrophizing for decades. So the new thought—like, you can’t get over to that other side, it’s too far of a gap.

Very good question, so what you need is a bridge thought—you need to have like a mini thought, like a mini step to get over to that other side. So I will link below in the show notes, my episode on Bridge Thoughts, because that is a practice I use every day, every—all the time when I’m practicing this. And also you can get my free download of bridge thoughts—like little tiny baby thoughts to get you to the thought you want to think—at [smbwell.com/bridgethoughts]. They help you start small in a way that’s believable to your brain, which is super, super important.

We need to believe our thoughts to have them work because a lot of like self-affirmations or think positive coaching doesn’t work. Like think about it, if you’ve ever done this on your body, maybe like you’ve been told to think like, “I love my body,” but while you’re thinking you love your body, there’s another part of your brain going, “But you freaking don’t, you don’t like your thick waist, you don’t like those flabby arms.” You’re wasting energy—this is what I know as a coach—you’re wasting energy and what you’re creating this dissonance in your brain, your brain is arguing with your thoughts. That’s too big a thought to go from “I don’t like my body” to “I love my body,” so we need some bridge thoughts. If we don’t believe our new thoughts, this whole thing won’t work. So listen to that episode and then ask me follow up questions again, which may lead you to wonder, wait, how do I get my question on the Love Your Life Show? How do I do that?

Easy peasy: you don’t have to become a personal client, you don’t have to become a student of the—the whatever, you can become a patron of the show for as little as five dollars a month. If you—if you’re a Patreon and you ask me a question, I will get back to you on air—this is a new part I want to do, okay, you can become a Patreon at [www.patreon.com/SusiePettit] my name E-double-T-I-T, it’s super simple.

And getting your question answered on air is not the only benefit of becoming a Patreon. Becoming a Patreon also supports my mission of helping as many people as possible feel empowered and more in control of their feelings and lives, okay, your small donation helps me do that more. It is also a gift to me, telling me you appreciate me taking the time each week to put these episodes out here. And finally, it also guarantees that we keep the show ad free. So if you like any of those things and feel called to that, I’ll put a link to become a Patreon in the show below, in the show description—that—that helps me so much, thank you.

All right, and Patreon or non-Patreon, students, non-students, what I want you to hear if no one has told you yet today: you’re awesome. The fact that you’re the type of person who listens to shows like this tells me a lot about you. And I am so grateful you’re out there in the world doing what you’re doing. Thank you for being a part of the Love Your Life Show. I love you and I’ll see you next week.